Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Blanchard, Raoul

(Encyclopedia)Blanchard, Raoul, 1877–1965, French geographer. He wrote a monograph on Flanders (1906) that earned him the chair of geography at the Univ. of Grenoble, a position he held for 50 years. He establish...

Ballou, Hosea

(Encyclopedia)Ballou, Hosea, 1771–1852, American clergyman, foremost among expositors of Universalism in the United States, b. Cheshire co., N.H. From 1818 until his death he was pastor of the Second Universalist...

Red Guards

(Encyclopedia)Red Guards, in Chinese history, politically active students of the Cultural Revolution (1966–69), who organized units to carry out Mao Zedong's aim of rerevolutionizing Chinese society. As their num...

Pringsheim, Nathanael

(Encyclopedia)Pringsheim, Nathanael nätänˈäĕl prĭngsˈhīm [key], 1823–94, German botanist, one of the founders of the scientific study of algae. He made important discoveries in the morphology and physiolo...

angry young men

(Encyclopedia)angry young men, term applied to a group of English writers of the 1950s whose heroes share certain rebellious and critical attitudes toward society. This phrase, which was originally taken from the t...

Mead, George Herbert

(Encyclopedia)Mead, George Herbert mēd [key], 1863–1931, American philosopher and psychologist, b. South Hadley, Mass., grad. Oberlin, 1883, and Harvard, 1888, and studied in Leipzig and Berlin. He taught at the...

Moore, Michael

(Encyclopedia)Moore, Michael, 1954–, American documentary filmmaker, author, and activist, b. Flint, Mich. A highly personal, populist, and frequently controversial and polarizing documentary filmmaker, he made h...

Boyle, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Boyle, Robert, 1627–91, Anglo-Irish physicist and chemist. The seventh son of the 1st earl of Cork, he was educated at Eton and on the Continent and conducted most of his researches at his own labor...

Wilberforce, William

(Encyclopedia)Wilberforce, William, 1759–1833, British politician and humanitarian. He was elected to Parliament in 1780 and during the campaign formed a lifelong friendship with William Pitt, whose measures he g...

Blanqui, Louis Auguste

(Encyclopedia)Blanqui, Louis Auguste lwē ôgüstˈ [key], 1805–81, French revolutionary and radical thinker. While a student in Paris, he joined (1824) a branch of the Carbonari, a revolutionary secret society; ...